such a generalization is rather unfair
i do agree a lot more goes in running costs and salaries often much greater than any giver would expect but thats the modern world
i do agree a lot more goes in running costs and salaries often much greater than any giver would expect but thats the modern world
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I don't.
In principle yes, but not in reality, and I do believe it was labours attempt at vote buying.
Exploitation is a loaded term to use. If I can only afford to pay you £2 an hour, and that's all I can afford to pay you, is it exploitation?
Most minimum wage proponents act as if all employers are greedy capitalists sitting on piles of money, and sure plenty of them exist, but it's an unfair picture.
There are many small businesses that may struggle to afford an employee at minimal wage (remember they also have to pay NI on top of the MW) and manufacturing jobs that are simply not worth the money.
Since the minimum wage was introduced, we have lost a number of low paying jobs to other countries, and have much higher youth unemployment.
So the ideal was to stop "exploitation", the reality is it just meant millions have no jobs to be exploited in.
I get the impression your life is not easy, but you are alive, and have food and shelter.
As you are earning less than the minimal wage, doesn't that prove the minimum wage is not a minimum liveable wage?
Let me put this another way as well. Millions of people live on benefits, sure for many who are not single mothers (because they can have a sweet deal on benefits if they play it) it's not easy, but can you point to the hordes of homeless starving people, no, because they don't exist. The proof is in the pudding, and benefits are at a liveable level.
What you look at these "work on benefits" programmes as free education?
Because that's what they are, you get free experience, it teaches or re-educates a work ethic.
Is it exploitation to give someone food, board, money and free education?
People did used to pay for apprenticeships, not get paid.
If I choose to work for £2 an hour, then it's not exploitation; but if I'm forced to work for £2 an hour, for the benefit of a third party, on pain of penalty if I don't comply, am I not being exploited by that third party?
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The multicultural newspaper!One million homeless, you do link to some rubbish!
And classing people as living with family as homeless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_England
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14838969
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/23/number-rough-sleepers-rises-fifth
Try around 500-10,000 depending on you definition of homelessness.
And how many of those homeless (excluding illegal immigrants) are due to drug/alcohol/mental issues as opposed to not being able to sign on and receive benefits and social housing.
You're in cloud cuckoo land.
(I also like how you took my quote out of context)
Who is forcing you to take benefits?
Oh, I'm sorry, should you just be given benefits with no strings attached for an indefinite period, sorry, didn't mean to exploit you!
Geometer would rather exploit the taxpayer.
The entire benefit system should be terminated. Other countries don't have it so why do we?
The people who administer it, will then not be needed so they will not be a burden on the taxpayer anymore.
Kills two crows with the one stone!
It will save billions and we will be able to compete with china.
They'll be cueing up to get into the factories for work. The foreigners won't be needed and will go home!
The entire benefit system should be terminated. Other countries don't have it so why do we?
The people who administer it, will then not be needed so they will not be a burden on the taxpayer anymore.
Kills two crows with the one stone!
It will save billions and we will be able to compete with china.
They'll be cueing up to get into the factories for work. The foreigners won't be needed and will go home!
Education? Don't make me laugh.
This is the 4th of these schemes I've been on in the last nine years. Since 2003, I've been on New Deal, New Deal again, Flexible New Deal, and now CAP. The first of those was actually worthwhile - I got a work placement that proved very successful, and led directly to two years well-paid work. Unfortunately, due to circumstances entirely out of my control it didn't develop into the long-term career change it promised to be at the start, and six years ago, I found myself back where I started - on the dole queue (I'll go into more detail if you want, but it's a long story). And that's where I've been ever since.
As far as education goes, I certainly gained a new skill from that scheme, but not to the level that I could actually make use of it in getting a job, and judging by the scheme's successors, the whole thing was a pure fluke.
The second one (2007) was a deeply depressing experience. Every day, for 13 weeks, thirty of us were herded into a room in a tin box on a trading estate, equipped with some PCs, copies of the Yellow Pages, and the jobs section from the local paper, and told to spend the day looking for jobs. There weren't enough PCs to go round; we could talk, but we weren't allowed to read anything except the publications provided; we weren't allowed to leave the building except at prescribed times; and the slightest dissent or expression of dissatifaction led to a report being sent to the Job Centre and the threat of sanctions.
Once a week, we had a half-hour chat with an "adviser"; and once, we were shown a video about turning up on time for job interviews. That was the extent of any "education or training".
The sheer tedium was unbelievable, and the only thing anybody learned was how to keep their temper while being talked to like a naughty 6-year old.
The third (Flexible New Deal) was different. You were assigned an adviser, who you saw once a fortnight, you could use their PCs if you wanted to, and that was about it. I actually enjoyed this - I built up a rapport with my "mentor", and found it useful having somebody to chat to about jobs and problems without beng put under pressure. It didn't get me a job, but it got me close, and the relationship could have been built on. No training involved.
Unfortunately, FND was scrapped by the coalition, and replaced with the Work Programme and various "Mandatory Work Activities", of which CAP is one.
CAP is simply this Tory government's half-baked and inept attempt to replicate the (relative) success of the last Tory government's Community Programme (which I've referred to elsewhere), but on the cheap. Consequently, it has all the failings of CP, and none of it's good points. As for my "education", I'm already qualified to do the job. I'm brushing up some old skills and making some useful contacts, but it's not going to lead to work, and I would probably have made those contacts anyway.
I must emphasise that these Mandatory Work schemes are not education or training programmes, nor are they intended to be.
I'm actually quite well educated. I left school at 16 with 4 O levels, but I've since acquired two more, as well as several NVQs and a BA. Part of my personal problem is that the experience and skills I've built up are in relatively esoteric fields, and there's very little demand for them in the current job market.
I'm intelligent, articulate, literate, and experienced. If the government were to offer me a genuine opportunity to re-train, that didn't cost me money and had realistic prospects of getting me into a job, I'd embrace it wholeheartedly; but it seems that all they can offer is repeated iterations of "job search" (which for many people, including myself, has become an empty and pointless ritual) under regimes that differ only in their degree of authoritarianism, and completely fail to address the real barriers to employment that I, and others, face.
As for "work ethics", I have much to say on that subject, but for now I'll content myself with pointing out that, in my direct personal experience, a substantial proportion of the participants in these schemes are mature, experienced people with perfectly well-developed work ethics, who just happen to have run into hard times. We don't need to be taught a work ethic, we just need the opportunity to put the ones we've got into practice.
But you live in Suffolk , can`t be much work there.
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